The Unwritten Laws of Engineering: What the Beginner Needs to Learn at Once

"Do not overlook the steadfast truth that your direct supervisor is your boss"

Many years ago in one of my first board meetings I remember presenting an org chart of our start-up and joking that I wasn't sure of what the semantics of the lines were. One of our non-execs pointed out, quite seriously, that the relationship is "can fire". After all, employees are there to do what their employer wants in exchange for payment - now in various places and various times what the employee would like to be doing and what the employer would like them to be doing may or may not be closely aligned, but the underlying commercial relationship is still there. Best not to forget it - which is what I think the article was getting at.

'Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor.'

In larger organizations it is often pretty easy to change your direct line manager - e.g. by expressing a desire to be on a project they are managing. Experienced and successful CxO types will also know that it is tricky working out where best to place senior technical people in an organization. I was asked fairly recently by the CEO of the company I work for who I should report to - I thought about it for a bit, gave a sensible choice together with an explanation of why I thought it was sensible and that was what happened. Seemed like a pretty sensible way to run things to me - as it happens the CEO is a engineer (nothing to do with software or computers), which probably explains the no-nonsense approach.

All of that can be avoided by being hired at a smaller company.

But you are right, until you learn to play politics you are on the loosing side in any conflict.

Interestingly, that was by far the statement I agreed with the most. At my company, all supervisors are engineers. The right supervisor and mentors will basically decide how much you learn on the job, and how far you will go.

Every company I've worked at as a software developer or a manager, my managers have been technical. I got to my position by being capable both technically and managerially. If you don't believe that doing what you are told to do is important, that is the reason that you won't be promoted, not because you are a "beast of burden".

I agree with you on this. I worked on a small team of 3 people and we all reported directly to a product manager. She was great. Not an engineer, but more than capable of knowing what we were talking about. And she's just a nice person and respected us as much as we respect her. But she was a great manager because she would point us at a problem and then get out of the way. She also took our feedback so we really felt like we were part of the process in what we built.

Fast forward to now, our team was absorbed into a much larger group. There's 4 frontend engineers, then they take one of them and make him the "manager". So they're back to 3 engineers. None of us feel like we have any say any more in what we're building.

I finally realized a few weeks ago what my problem with him is, and it's that he should be reporting to me. He's a nice enough guy, and an ok developer, but definitely not a good manager.

I'm taking the lesson in the article and moving to another company soon where I can look people in the eye and feel like they know what they're doing.